“She told the court it was in defence, said that after years of him treating her like that, she fully believed he was serious, that he was going to kill her later that night.”She shrugged.“Apparently, they thought she must have been insane because when the police came to arrest her, she attacked them.Nearly bit off one of their ears, I overheard once, because shecouldn’t stand to have another man touch her that night.And I suppose that must have looked insane, mustn’t it?”
Emily thought of Peggy, of her similar experience.She’d been in such a state of hysterics when the police arrived that they’d arrested her instead of her husband.Perhaps she, too, couldn’t stand to be touched by any man after all her husband had done to her.
Emily nodded slowly.“I wonder,” she mused, “how things might go differently for women if we were allowed to become police officers.A woman would have understood.She wouldn’t have seemed like another threat, at least.”
Annie’s brows raised.“Goodness…women police officers.That’s quite a thought.”She exhaled.“At any rate, I am sorry about that.I think Rose is just jealous I have another friend.”She blushed, eyes sweeping Emily’s face as though nervous she might disagree with the word.
“Oh,” Emily said.She smiled, then stopped, feeling somehow guilty for expressing pleasure when Rose was evidently so distraught about it.“I can understand that.”And she did, but also hoped Rose wouldn’t come at her like that ever, ever again.
“I’ll talk to her, Emily,” Annie said.“But I should go, as should you.I don’t want you in trouble for being tardy.”She gave a little wave, then turned and walked back down the hall, disappearing beyond her open cell door.
Emily turned reluctantly, heading downstairs for the chapel, her mind fixated on how in the name of God Annie had been incarcerated for the past fifteen years.
CHAPTER 22
EMILY
Late July, 1961
Day 43 (140 to go)
A little over a month after Emily’s first visit to Dr.Stone’s office, she was once again called to the infirmary.She’d known this was coming—Dr.Stone had said the exams were “routine”—but still found herself dragging her feet up to the second-floor corridor, nauseous after a breakfast of runny eggs that did nothing to quell her nerves about the appointment.
There was a lineup of five other girls ahead of her and, frowning, Emily took her place at the back of the queue.She leaned against the whitewashed brick wall and pressed her weight into it in an attempt to ease the ache in her back.Her exhaustion drove her to sleep each night, but the mattress was still atrocious.Movement helped, and at least there was no shortage of that at the Mercer, worked off their feet as they were.
Emily was just beginning to wonder how long she was going to have to wait to see Dr.Stone when a wail sounded from the psychiatric ward down the hall.All six of the women’s heads turned, though there was nothing to see.
“Stop it!I don’t want it!I said I don’t want it!” the voice shrieked, and Emily’s stomach jolted.It sounded like Annie.A matron responded gentlywith something Emily didn’t catch, and Annie began to moan and cry.Emily was next to tears just listening to it.
“It’s just one of the Blues,” a woman in line said.“That Crazy Annie, who killed her kid.Don’t know why they don’t just keep her drugged.”
Emily opened her mouth to retort, but at that moment Dr.Stone’s office door opened and the rude woman was admitted.The girl who had just emerged was hugging herself, clearly upset.Her eyes were bright, nose red.She was in Emily’s domestics class.
“Are you all right?”Emily asked her as she passed.
The girl looked up.“I don’t know what she did,” she said, eyes watering now.“I don’t feel right.Down there.”She flushed as her gaze flashed down to her legs.“I don’t…I don’t know.”She shuffled off and around the corner as Emily’s trepidation increased.
Annie’s crying had subsided, and Emily hoped she would see her at dinner, find out what happened.She’d seemed fine at breakfast.
The wait for her turn with the doctor felt both painfully slow and too short.Each of the girls ahead of her came out of the office looking shaken, and Emily caught herself tapping the wall in anxiety.Even the rude woman who had disparaged Annie kept her eyes downcast as she passed, hurrying around the corner and out of sight.
Emily’s heart hammered as the door opened and the nurse beckoned her in with a stiff hand.
“Clothes off, gown on, up on the table,” she said dispassionately.Emily’s legs felt as though they belonged to someone else, but she summoned all the courage she could, and complied.As she climbed up, she spotted a red hair on the sheet at the head of the table.
It did not belong to me, nor the patient who had vacated the infirmary before me.I plucked it off and tossed it to the floor with a grimace.Evidently, the sheets were not changed between patients, which caused me no small amount of disquiet.Were the doctor’s tools sanitized before and after procedures, or was that process similarly unsanitary?
Dr.Stone emerged a moment later from the office at the back of the infirmary.Remembering her first pelvic exam, just the sight of the woman sent Emily’s pulse racing.She struggled to calm it.
“Lay back, Radcliffe,” Dr.Stone said, sitting down on the short stool and rolling it over toward Emily’s feet with a rattle.Emily did as she was told, fighting every instinct she had to kick the doctor in the face and run for it.
“What’s the exam for today?”she asked instead, as politely as possible.
“These are routine exams to ensure the health and well-being of the prison population,” Dr.Stone declared in a deadpan voice.
It was a rehearsed line, a politician’s lie, regurgitated so often that it had lost all trace of believability or meaning.I still did not understand why the pelvic exams were routine, but the moment before my genitals were at the mercy of this doctor was not the time to question the procedure.But how I would come to wish that I had, in fact, protested.
Emily took a deep breath and pressed her feet down into the stirrups, tensing the muscles in her legs to keep her knees from snapping shut.She stared up at the ceiling, willing her heart rate down as she clutched the edges of the bed.
